6 September 21, 2009

by Pat GRECO

Reporter

PG: Tell me about your new triple record “Three” what was the inspiration to do a more toned down folksier triple album?

JP: I got carried away (laughs), I had a lot of songs but I wanted to make a record that kind of, well I love folk music it was kind of something that I kind of inherited from my father, was a love of that music, he had a record collection that was real deep in British folk and stuff like that. It has always been an influence on what I do and I thought it would be cool to have

an opportunity to record some of those songs that I have been writing and to play some music with my dad, so he is playing on the record a bunch- he is not here tonight, tonight is more of a rock and roll show. We do some stuff from “Three” and stuff from the rest of the catalogue too. With “Three” I really felt like it was an opportunity to kind of dig

a little deeper into some

of the traditional stuff and make a record that had a lot of variety too. It is a long record and I tried to make it so that there were a variety of tunes.

PG: You have been doing the university circuit for years now and I know that in students have perhaps gotten a little tired of see- ing the same show from some other bands, but that doesn’t seem to be the case

PANTHER POST

THREE MINUTES WITH JOEL

when the Joel Plaskett Emergency comes to town. How are you able to keep reinventing yourself and able at the same time to stay relavant?

JP: Well, I love playing, so I feel like if you can keep the performance, you know? I mean we rehearse and we try and get some new stuff into the show every time we play and at the same time we try and just wing-it and just make stuff up on the spot or just try and embrace the night. I think sometimes what happens is some bands kind of get in a routine every now and then, but I try and shake it up on record and that means when it is shaken up on record I kind

of have to shake it up live

a little bit too. If it is go- ing to keep with the record, and especially with this new album there is so much material on it, that it gives me a lot of new stuff just to dig into but first and fore- most I just love to go. Like the guys I admire, the guys like (Bruce) Springsteen who just kind of go out and just really tale a lot of pride in the live show. For me I try not to get to precious, if something screws up, or a guitar becomes unplugged or you don’t hit all the marks, it is a rock and roll show and those are often the things that people remember as being cool.

PG: How was the recep-

tion in Kelowna? (Refer- ring to Plaskett’s May

12 show in Kelowna B.C. Plaskett’s first time re- turning to the city since re- leasing his hit song “Love this Town’’, in which he states that he hates that town.)

JP: It was good, that was the strange thing. It could have been a nightmare but it went really well. It was weird because I haven’t been back since I wrote that song, that is a lie we played the Big White Ski Resort and that was an even worse show,

it was a real nightmare. I had a good feeling about this show and then when I played that song, I made up a couple new verses and it

was kind of hilarious.

PG: I have seen you play every size venue from

a church to the biggest concert in Nova Scotia - History. From Acoustic to Electric. What is your favorite type of show to Play?

P: That is the thing, I don’t think there is any one, be- cause if you do any one for too long it gets boring. So to shift, That (Paul) Mc- Cartney show was amazing from a sheer spectacle point of view and to be apart of that and to play in front

of that many people was a total trip. But I loved play-

ing Massey Hall (legendary